This invention relates to the handling of articles, particularly bottles, and in particular to the removal of bags from bundles of plastic bottles.
In a bottling plant, in the beverage industry, for example, empty bottles are received in bundles wrapped in a thin plastic film which defines a bag around each bundle. The thin plastic film is provided to prevent the contamination of the bottles during shipping from the bottle manufacturer to the bottling plant. A typical bundle may have a single tier of bottles, and may be about 3 feet by 4 feet in size. The bottles in each such bundle must be removed from the bundle and eventually placed in single file for a typical bottling operation.
The removal of bags from bundles was previously accomplished by pushing the bundle against two horizontal guides, or neck rails, parallel to the direction of motion of the bundle and roughly at the height of the necks of the bottles, to define a separation between two of the rows of bottles within the bag. A knife, typically a wire heated to high temperature, then descended between the two guides to cut the bag. The separation of the bottles by the guides assured that the knife will not contact the bottles. Operators then grasped the scrap bag portions and remove them. Large trash bins were provided for receiving the scrap. The bins were then periodically removed.
Presently, most systems utilize a slitter knife between guide rails on one side and strip rails on the opposite side of the bundle. The bundle is first slit with the knife, then the bag is manually pulled off by hand through the strip rail.
These methods are slow and labor-intensive, as either one or two operators are required for stripping of bags.
One type of machine which is now available attempts to improve the speed of stripping a bag by using a specialized type of bag, having a projecting edge or tail. The machine has brushes which engage the projecting tail to pull the bag taut to allow a hot knife to cut a bag opening on one side of the bundle. However, this type of machine is unable to engage conventional plastic bags, which do not have such tails. In addition, the bag is still manually pulled off the bottles toward the opposite side from the hot knife.
It is an object of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for stripping bags from a bundle of objects automatically.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for removal of bags from objects and placement of bags in a receptacle where the bags can be transferred easily to a trash or reclamation facility.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the detailed description of the preferred embodiment which follows.